Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘Do Not Contact’ rules to safeguard both the contact center and the consumer.

At a Glance

About Global Compliance™

These scenarios illustrate the complex regulations that contact centers must navigate to comply with local and national laws. Non-compliance can lead to substantial fines and harm an organization’s reputation. Consequently, it is crucial for contact centers to possess the capacity to efficiently and effectively handle and conform to these regulations and regulators including the including Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), and Do Not Call (DNC).

Consider the following scenarios:

A collections agency that is limited to one interaction with a debtor per day, even if the debtor initiates the contact.
A contact center that is allowed to call a specific number a maximum of 5 times within a week.
If a call to a particular phone number has been abandoned in California, Washington, New York, the District of Columbia, or Illinois, that number cannot be dialed again for a period of 72 hours.

Rules for regulatory compliance enforcement

Compliance Rules Engine: Making Instant Dial or Do Not Dial Decisions

Softdial Contact Center (SCC) incorporates a compliance rules engine designed to handle scenarios where quick “dial” or “do not dial” decisions are crucial. This engine relies on a history service that provides real-time data for a specific phone number or customer, including multiple contact addresses or phone numbers. These real-time insights allow for prompt dialing decisions without compromising the efficiency of predictive performance or other essential functionalities like managing abandonment rates or call blending.

The compliance rules engine offers organizations the flexibility to adapt to both existing and newly emerging compliance requirements without the need to modify the underlying software. It enables the establishment of multiple rules with precise criteria, ensuring that only numbers meeting these criteria will be dialed.

Global 'Do Not Contact' Compliance

Global Compliance ensures that contact centers can respect consumers’ preferences and adhere to legal requirements by allowing for real-time screening and compliance checks when initiating outbound communications. It provides a streamlined and flexible solution for contact centers to maintain compliance with consumer protection laws and regulations.

Sources of ‘Do Not Contact’ requirements

‘Do Not Contact’ requirements emerge from diverse origins, and Global Compliance guarantees adherence to each of them:

1. Customer driven

When initiating any form of contact, such as voice calls, email, chat, or SMS, the Global Compliance engine performs real-time checks to determine if the customer has previously requested not to be contacted using that specific method.

Additionally, during any live interaction, if the customer expresses a preference not to be contacted in a particular way in the future, the compliance database is promptly updated. It’s also possible to configure these additions to be temporarily blocked for a specified duration, such as no contact for 48 hours.

2. Do-Not-Call list driven

We employ DNC (Do Not Contact) lists during the initial launch of outgoing sessions to determine their permissibility when contacting a customer. Advanced sharding techniques enable real-time processing of all DNC lists, even when they encompass extensive databases comprising hundreds of millions of contact entries.

These lists can originate from internal or external sources and may be applicable at various levels, such as campaign, company, state, or territory. DNC lists can be conveniently managed through two methods:

Global Compliance: Utilizing the Global Compliance feature within the system.
Direct API Access: Managing lists directly through the API.

This flexible approach allows for the bulk addition or removal of phone numbers and email addresses as needed, ensuring adherence to compliance requirements.

3. Rules set by authorities

In addition to consumers expressing their contact preferences, numerous countries have regulations governing contact restrictions that may be imposed by state, federal, or other authorities. These rules can apply to various aspects, including:

Specific Numbers/Addresses: Restrictions on contacting particular phone numbers or email addresses.
Outbound Campaigns: Limitations placed on outbound contact campaigns.
Geographic Regions: Regulations based on geographic regions or territories.
Outcome Types: Rules influenced by the outcomes of previous contact attempts.

For instance:

A collections agency may be restricted to having only one conversation with a debtor per day, even if the debtor initiates the call.
Following an abandoned phone call to a specific number within a defined set of territories, there may be a 72-hour restriction on contacting that number again.

Global Compliance provides the capability to define an unlimited number of such rules with precise criteria, ensuring comprehensive compliance with these regulations.

Aggregation

Frequently, the same customer may be the target of multiple outreach initiatives conducted by various contact centers. Global Compliance effectively coordinates and oversees all contact attempts and retries, treating them as if they originate from a single source.

Compliant out-of-the-box

When you receive our predictive dialer, you can rest assured that the outbound compliance rules are ingrained for your country. This means that when supervisors utilize our product, compliance is mandatory. Unlike many other dialers, the choice to be non-compliant is not an option.

Even in regions without specific rules, we still uphold compliance by adopting the standards set by national direct marketing organizations in various countries. This ensures that regardless of where our dialer is implemented globally, it consistently delivers high-performance while keeping nuisance calls to a minimum.